The magnitude of creative industries in Portugal: what do the distinct industry-based approaches tell us?

There is a generalized lack of clear definitions and estimations as to what represents cultural activities and creative industries. This paper critically reviews the growing corpus of literature on approaches to the measurement of creative industries and presents a detailed mapping of the creative sectors according to relevant industry-based methodologies. Using a unique official database, Quadros de Pessoal/ Matched Employer-Employee Dataset, which includes over 3 million workers, we found that, for Portugal, depending on the approach used, the size of creative industries differs considerably, ranging from 2.5% (DCMS model) to 4.6% (WIPO copyright model). We further propose a distinct industry-based approach focusing on core creative industries. Accordingly, core creative industries represent 3.5% of Portuguese employment, in which 'software publishing'/'computer consultancy' (1.0%), 'publishing' (1.0%) and 'advertising and marketing' (0.4%) are the most relevant sub-segments.